We can likely all agree that finding a promising candidate to fill a job opening feels great. They’ve applied, interviewed and been screened by your organization, all while representing themselves well all along the way. It’s easy to feel like the hard work is done and that everyone can go home happy.

Before you mentally move your candidate from “prospect” to “placed”, keep in mind that the candidate journey isn’t over yet. There’s still an onboarding process to be completed before your great candidates become great employees. If that process ends up feeling tedious or confusing, you could still leave a bad taste in a good prospect’s mouth.

Avoid the risk of sending a disenchanted employee to your client’s office on day one by taking the time to think through and embrace an onboarding process that make sense for everyone involved. Here’s where to start.

Creating the “Ideal” Onboarding Experience

The first step in creating the ideal onboarding experience is to recognize that there is no ideal onboarding experience. While we strive at Employstream to build the best onboarding platform for the staffing industry, we know it’s short-sighted to think there’s one “right way” to onboard in every circumstance. We’ve designed flexibility into our platform to allow for custom onboarding workflows. In the end, the right approach depends heavily on the people you serve.

Consider, for example, how two different staffing agencies might need to take very different approaches to building the ideal onboarding process. Let’s say the first company is a healthcare staffing firm, and the second deals mostly with placing manual labor candidates. Variations in the right approach to onboarding will quickly become apparent based on:

The staffing firm. In the healthcare staffing scenario, we may see several different people involved in recruiting, credentialing, QA and other steps of the onboarding process. In a light industrial staffing scenario, one person might orchestrate the entire onboarding experience. The right onboarding platform must be flexible enough allow efficient progression through the process either way, both for the candidate and the other users of the platform.

The candidate.A healthcare staffing firm bringing physician or nurse candidates in the door may need a different approach to onboarding than the industrial staffing firm onboarding plant workers. While one group might be more comfortable filling out documents online a few steps at a time, the other group may expect to fill everything out at a kiosk during one visit to a job site. The right onboarding platform should allow you to build a journey that makes sense, delivering the right experience across phones, kiosks, home PCs or elsewhere.

Third parties. No matter what sort of staffing firm you work for, you’ll probably be using multiple technology systems and service providers to get a candidate from point A to B. More times than not, this means a disruption in placing an onboarding request—and in the candidate experience. The right onboarding platform will ensure neither the candidate nor the various owners of sections of the onboarding process has to spend time jumping around between platforms, relying on one interface instead.=

Find What Works for You… With Us

Whatever your situation, know that we can help create an onboarding experience that’s right for your people, your prospects and your partners alike, as flexibility, mobility and automation are core facets of EmployStream’s products. We’ve worked with a broad variety of staffing firms with diverse needs in the past, and we’re happy to work with you to set a foundation for long-term employee retention starting before a candidate ever starts an assignment. In the process, we’re going to make it easier (and more cost-effective) than ever to manage candidate onboarding from your end. Reach out, then let’s start the conversation.

About Us

At EmployStream, we deliver an amazing hiring process for everyone involved. Our platform provides ROI by removing the typical pain and costs of the employment experience with modern, beautiful, mobile-friendly software. We are built by staffing industry experts that want to simplify your work life, eliminate manual processes, and help you find, hire, and retain great people.